Devereux counselor admits to assaulting resident

WEST CHESTER — A Delaware County man who had worked as a counselor at a Devereux campus admitted in Common Pleas Court last week that he overreacted when he got into a dispute with a resident there.

Rather than back away from the confrontation and call other staff members, or diffuse the situation calmly, Alie Kamara grabbed the man, pinned him to the ground, and choked him so forcefully that the man’s ears began to bleed.

“My client took it to an extent that he shouldn’t have,” Kamara’s defense attorney, Evan Kelly of West Chester, told Judge William P. Mahon in court Friday.

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Kamara, 26, of Sharon Hill, pleaded guilty to a single count of simple assault for the December incident, for which he was dismissed from Devereux, a residential facility for patients with emotional and behavioral issues.

Burack, in describing the incident for Mahon, told the judge that there had been some question about who started the confrontation, Kamara or the resident, 53-year-old Kenneth Raymond. But, the prosecutor said, Kamara was guilty of “inappropriately escalating” the matter, and had caused some injury to Raymond, who he said suffers from a mental disability caused by seizures.

“It’s not an easy job,” Mahon told Kamara in sentencing him to two year’s supervised probation, referring to work with patients who have behavioral problems. “But if you were getting frustrated with what this guy was doing, you needed to leave the job before you reacted the way you did.”

According to Burack and the Easttown police criminal complaint filed in the case, the incident occurred about 5 p.m. on Dec. 28 in one of the cottage’s at Devereux’s Whitlock Center on Leopard Road.

According to Raymond’s account, he had gone into the cottage’s kitchen to get some milk. Kamara, who was the staff aide at the cottage, told him not to take the milk out of the kitchen. He then pushed Raymond to the ground and began choking him until he could not breathe.

Detective James Sesher, who investigated the attack, said members of the Berwyn Fire and Ambulance Company said Raymond had a lump on his forehead, ruptured blood vessels, a red mark on his neck, and was bleeding from his ears and mouth. A nurse was called to attend to him, but he declined to go to the hospital.

When police questioned Kamara, he told them that he was preparing the clients’ dinner when Raymond came into the kitchen to get a crate of milk. He told Raymond it was not time for the milk to be brought to the table, and Raymond became upset and threw a punch at him, according to the affidavit. Kamara grabbed him, then the men fell to the ground, and Kamara held him so he could not throw a blender he had gotten a hold of.

But when asked to give a written statement, some of the details were inconsistent, and he failed to explain how Raymond had gotten a mark on his neck, denying that he choked him. He was charged with assault on Dec. 31.

Kelly said his client, who is a student, had been fired from his job at Devereux as the result of the incident. As part of his sentence, he will have to complete 50 hours of community service and complete an anger management course.